Compromised
by Ashlee Sherman
Summary: Things go entirely wrong on a mission, leaving one agent in the hospital clinging to life and another betraying everything he'd worked for. Ethan's life as an IMF operative has always been difficult—harder now that he has so much to lose all over again.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Notes: **I started this story on a kink meme as a puny first draft, but it's been slowly growing bigger and bigger, so I've sharpened it up! The other chapters currently rough-drafted are getting smoothed out, so give me some time to get those bad boys posted; if you're reading this and saw it on the kink meme, you may just like it a little more this read-though; I've incorporated a lot of new dialogue and fixed a lot of errors, as well as included new/altered scenes.

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**CHAPTER ONE.**

* * *

**It should had been an easy in-and-out operation**, one that snaked through eye-roll-inducing amounts of dark, damp spaces. Fortunately for Brandt, he'd managed to sap a little of Ethan's drive from some _magical_ and _infinite_ well; it's how he ended up moving through a never-ending line of aqueducts, flashlight half-gnawed between his teeth. The lukewarm water lapped around his calves, inky black and _opaque_ even with the light beaming from his mouth as he thought, _'__Mission accomplished in no time, __sure. If you say so, Benji'. _He would have preferred to accomplish their goals without getting a face-full of spiders or an earful of roaches. Whatever horrors from the deep he ran into, he made sure to bitch about it in full to _every _agent on his comm.

Above his head there was the Zimmer Mansion, a lavish place full of material as illegal as you can get. The _plan, _basically, was to get into hard-to-reach places via the 'ducts; once he's there, it would be as easy as pulling information from Mr. Zimmer's office computer and then blowing it sky-high. Every so often, Brandt had patted his breast pocket to sure he has the USB appropriate for the situation; by the end of the night, he needed very particular data: who had done business with Zimmer. While it was Ethan and Jane's job apprehending Zimmer and his... _explosively_ illegal materials, Will's job was key. Couldn't let those activities continue without a watchful eye, after all.

They had gotten all of this Intel from Agent Robert Ellis, someone Ethan said they could put their full trust in. Someone he'd worked with _many_times before. They had all met for lunch, laughing over this and that as they prepped, and hell, Brandt liked the guy. Seemed like a real straight-shooter, someone on level with Ethan, someone he was fully capable of putting his support behind. It should have been easy.

But it was fucked. Totally _fucked_. Which was made clear swiftly and suddenly through the sound of Ethan Hunt struggling for his life at the other end of the radio. Brandt stops everything he's doing to press himself up against the wet walls of the tunnel, listening to Ethan rasp at the other end. That wasn't good. That wasn't good. A flood of panic catches Brandt at the thought that somewhere too far away, their team leader might be dying or getting close to it. Which sounds so fucking impossible, when he considers who he's talking about—

"E-" he starts, but freezes up before he commits IMF hara-kiri over code names. "_Halley, _what the hell's going on over there? Forbes, can you see him?_"_

Benji's already moving, Brandt could tell, static rumbling on the tech's side of things as he jostled around. There's a brief sound of keyboard strokes before he's humming nervously under his breath. Clearly, whatever he sees his surprising, because Brandt hears the distinct sound of a palm slapping the table in the van.

"No way—"

"Halley, respond!" Jane calls.

"It's _Finlay_," Benji continues—_Ellis'_ code name.

They're relieved to hear Ethan cough out (clearly in the middle of a sprint): "Finlay's defected. I repeat, Finlay's defected. Everyone abort the mission; everything's been _compromised_."

Brandt's frozen still for a moment. Agent Ellis has been compromised. That meant that a.) Ethan was no doubt rushing to catch his so-called 'friend', and b.) that this was all a big_ trap_. An explosion shakes something above Brandt and he stays pressed against the wall.

"What was _that_, now?" he barks, hazel eyes wide and scanning in the dark.

"Charges that weren't supposed to go off yet," Jane tells Brandt, while she's escaping the guards' sights somewhere within the mansion. "Get _out of there_, Borrelly."

_Borrelly._ That'd be him, alright.

_"_Shit—don't have to tell _m_e twice", he grumbles into his earpiece before stepping backward with a soft _splish_. When something under his heel shifts he expects it to be a loose brick, old and abused from years of service... but bricks aren't supposed to make the _entire _tunnel click loudly, are they? A loud curse later, the tunnel screams steam from the cracks above and hisses mechanical noises, noises that nearly deafen his team's right-hand eardrums.

"Borrelly, what's that noise?" Ethan all but yells, out of breath and voice edged like a sword.

Brandt's already running as fast as the water'll let him, looking over his shoulder at something he didn't expect to see tonight: metal spikes, pumped out of the walls like pistols. Traps, made for the sole purpose of keeping snooping eyes _out._

Ellis had had the specific job of shutting them all down.

_So much for that._

"Forbes, I got some traps going off down here; can you get them shut down?" Brandt only hopes Benji can reach them because they are_ closing in fast, _and god does he have his doubts, which are only confirmed by the panicked stutter that the tech pulls off. The stutter lost behind incredible noises filling Brandt's ears.

* * *

Benji tries to speak over the rush of noise from his spot in the van, regardless of how much good it does. Brandt's down there in need of help, after all.

"I-I can't—I can't reach them; they're all antiquated pieces of junk—mainlined to the _mansion_."

_Silence, _from deep down in the tunnels. Benji swallows dryly.

"Borrelly? Hey... _Brandt!_" He regrets abandoning the code name almost immediately, but it's hardly his main concern now as slides his chair across the room to the security cams and sees their team leader make a hellfire run for an exit. "You guys, I'm not getting anything from B—"

"I _know,_"Ethan breathes, doing nothing to quell any of their worries (not that he was trying to, he never tries such tactics). Somewhere in the mansion, he's hauling ass. Ellis is long since gone. "The two of you need to regroup together—and create your own extraction point if we can't get to you in time; don't tell us where you are over the frequency unless _I _give the word."

_... _He adds, a sense of betrayal hidden behind a dark tone, "Ellis might be tapping us, since he has the frequency."

"But what about—" Jane cuts in (the clack of her heels echoing in the background), but Ethan's already ahead of her.

"Don't worry, I'm _going_ to get him _out _of there."

The determination in his voice makes him sound invincible. But the fact of the matter is, when a soot and dirt-spotted Ethan finally _does_ slide down to a stop in the belly of the aqueducts, he's not so sure if his teammate is as durable as he is right now. Three minutes into the damp, murky blackness shows no sign of their chief analyst. Sometimes crumbly rock pelts down onto his shoulders, already damp from sweat, and he holds his breath. Nothing happens, but there _are _traps down here, he considers. It's possible they are still set in some places, and he couldn't risk trapping Brandt _and _himself in the belly of the mansion. worst-case scenario they'd die instantly, _worser_-than-_worst_-case, they'd be left to die slowly, trapped, instantly disavowed.

"Brandt?" His voice bites through the air, rough, but hopeful. "Brandt, respond!"

Silence. It's unnerving.

"_Will!_"

Just when he thinks he'll be met with another long string of silence, a familiar voice bounces on the walls... It's gnarled by pain, but it's a familiar one all the same.

"Ethan, you... out there?"

Thank god. Ethan lingers in place long enough to close his eyes and nod, breathing a sigh, before he quickly trudges through the dank area. His compact flashlight catches a black island in the water that he suddenly realizes is a knee; when he pans the light upward he finds Will nearly submerged in the low canal, one hand groping at the walls in an attempt to stay afloat.

Which means he's unable to stand on his own. Ethan's stomach sinks at the thought, and once again sinks _further_ when he catalogs the red fog beneath the surface of the water and the cause of it: a short, glinting spear poking through under Brandt's ribcage, shivering with each breath the analyst takes.

"_Fuck_." Ethan squeezes his eyes shut before he hesitates, dipping down and grabbing his operative's shoulder. Brandt's pale, and his eyes reflect panic under the scrutiny of the tiny flashlight. When he reaches down and runs his fingertips along the tender flesh, Brandt arches with a raw gasp of pain. "Sorry."

What should he do...? Well, first thing's first: do _not _pull that sonovabitch out. The other problem, though, is that it's too heavy to let sit in the wound. It'd slide out or jostle the guy's spleen around before it'd ever behave. And he couldn't shave it down, with it made out of what it's made out of.

He adds quietly, "It's bad."

"Thanks for the spoiler alert," Will gasps sarcastically under Ethan's hold. "Hard to run from traps when you're in water. Ever try to run in ocean water...? While running from _bullets_ or something?"

Ethan isn't even necessarily listening to him, head bobbing around to survey the damage more closely. Shit._ Shit._

Brand rolls his eyes. "Of course you have, what am I even saying..."

"I'm getting you out of here; the mission's aborted. Ellis is gone."

"We'll get that guy back... We'll get 'em. For bein' such an ass." Brandt must have seen the shadowy outlines of his friend's face, and to that, Ethan shakes his head. None of that's important right now.

"Let's get _you_ out of here first." He just... has to figure out how to move him, without breaking him. You can't replace your friends at the thirft store. "Can you hold it while we move?"

"You have to ask?" he slurs back, "I'd like to keep most of my blood. A-and organs, maybe."

Precisely ten seconds later he's pulling Brandt toward the entrance, counting down the _three_ minutes it would take _running _alone. They don't have any choice but to haul ass, and he'll be sure to apologize to Brandt when this is all over, because he can feel the body in his hands shaking and jerking from the motions. Soft sobs of pain remind him why he has to get him out of here quickly—his men are his responsibility, and he refuses to let Will die in a place like this.

"Calm down there, tiger," Brandt gasps.

"They're coming."

"Wha'?" is all Brandt manages before Ethan crouches down and takes the analyst with him. In-between the vice-like pain tormenting his spine and the splash of dirty water, he must not have noticed the guards that Ethan had. _So close,_ Ethan thinks, _so close to the goddamn exit._ The night sky twinkles a little light behind the shadowy figures firing at them. He pulls his handgun and shoots one man dead. As he floats there in the moonlight Ethan tries vainly to reload his gun.

"Shit—!"

Ethan expects to be shot at again, _killed_, but the guard isn't the one doing the shooting now; in fact, the guard is the one gurgling, falling face-first with a splash. Jane's familiar figure appears at the mouth of the aqueducts to tower over the fallen man.

"Ethan...!"

Brandt is deadweight in Ethan's hands, his hands drooping lifelessly into the water. Ethan tries to speak to him, tries to shift him, but he gets no answer; all he can see is the spear un-lodged and missing while a line of blood licks its way down Brandt's pants. He drags him, exhausted, for Jane to reach out and help with.

"... You found us in the nick of time."

"_Always_," she replies sternly. But she's worried, pressing her palm into the unconscious man's wound. The van's already pulling around, engine rumbling while the mansion falls victim to more explosions _they_ hadn't planted. The IMF will no doubt be scrambling to figure out what went wrong. Who went wrong. Right now, debriefings would have to wait, because the life of one of their agents was _seeping out_ between Jane's thin fingers.

He would bleed out quickly.

Ethan wastes no time. "Hospital. Now."


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Sorry guys! This got removed from the site; I must've missed my mark on the guildeline warnings, because they flat-out deleted the sucker. Sorry for everyone who reviewed/favorited/alerted. ;;

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**CHAPTER TWO.**

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**There was once a time **where Agent Robert Ellis took Ethan by the shoulders in a firm grip, looked at him with wise green eyes, and promised he would help in any way to ensure Julia would be protected—and that he was always going to be around when shit hit the fan. He was a decade older than Hunt but always seemed younger, not in the lines of his face but in vibrancy and power. When he spoke, people listened. When he fought, faces hit the floor. He was strong and his _personality_was strong.

So how has it come to this?

The room is eerily silent, and once the hospital door shuts, all of the uncertainty and confusion vacuum-seals into the room; there's Benji, on his laptop in the corner, where the light trickles in; Jane's sitting next to Brandt's bedside, rubbing the back of his unresponsive hand with a manicured thumb (hoping, _hoping_ that a touch would bring him back to reality); Ethan's on the phone, and shuts out any noise to listen to a message that had been left for him—and only him.

It plays.

_"I'm sorry about your agent, my friend, but it was a necessary evil. Working with the IMF, I've come to realize how meaningless this all this. Your bones are all achy right now, aren't they? Rest 'em, because once I demolish D.C. and clean out for a fresh new slate, you'll be thanking me. But not before I thank you for assisting me and my colleagues in recapturing these warheads._

"So...

thank you_. Stay out of D.C., Ethan. Wouldn't want you suffering the same fate as your analyst."_

When the message ends and the voice mail discontinues, he grips the phone in one hand like its a neck that he intends to break. The tendons in his knuckles reflex and pale while Jane sees waves of silent anger rolling off of his rigid shoulders. She releases Will's hand and places it softly at his side as she studies _him _next; the color is drained from his face, and it's jarring to see him such an unhealthy shade under the fluorescent lights. There's no hesitancy in the way her hand travels from the side of the bed to his cheek, brushing across the faint creases of his face.

By the time—no, _before _the time that they'd reached the hospital, he was lost in the throes of shock from blood loss. She feels a pang of guilt now in retrospect, thinking back there that he was _definitely_ going to die. She's not sure when she started assuming the worst; perhaps the deaths of people long since passed have hurt her optimism. Perhaps she was right to assume: they'd lost him twice in surgery, and for moments that stretched out far too long. His body was alive, but his mind was trapped behind some veil of unconsciousness they couldn't reach. Perhaps never would. Right now, there's a length of tube forcing air into his lungs and a catheter in the crease of his arm giving him back precious blood he'd lost, but would it all be in vain... should it be the case that he never open his eyes again?

At least, she considers, the IMF had stationed skilled surgeons and doctors here under their command. Though, she has to wonder if the only reason they tried so _defiantly _against Death to bring him back was for all the information he'd had stored away in his head. As her fingers comb through his hair (such a poor state of disorder, his bangs), she bitterly remembers that he had been HQ's Chief Analyst for a reason. They couldn't let such an asset go without a fight... and to be perfectly fair, neither could they.

She remembers the huffed words he'd said to her before they'd split up for their mission.

"_Don't break __**your**__ heel out there, and I won't break mine."_

She'd slapped him upside the back of the head for that, and he had laughed under his breath before taking a large step, out of the van and into the dark. When she recollects that image of his broad back escaping around the corner, she thinks maybe it will be filed as another unwanted goodbye in her life... The hiss of forced breathing can't compare to his lucid eyes gleaming, humorous, smart.

She speaks softly. "What is our mission, Ethan?"

Benji looks up from his laptop with his fingers pressed to one temple, tired but prepared for an answer. All the while, Ethan is quiet where he sits. The hand clenching the phone relaxes and he's nodding to a plan he's already forming in his head. There's _something_particularly desperate about the way his blue eyes scan the floors, like something's trapped down below him, but Jane and Benji would never comment on that, not when something determined is resting alongside that edged desperation.

"The mission..." It's a low, unfinished murmur at first. He rises from his chair and walks a slow deliberate circle around it. And then he slams the side of a fist against the wall; Benji startles, Jane makes no movement... and of course neither does Brandt. The mission is obvious enough, he knows—they can read him like a book. "We're going after Ellis. But first we're going to find where _Zimmer_ran off."

_Zimmer, _the man who's rather extravagant home they'd attempted to sneak into: a radical billionaire, someone of interest, someone who did dirty deals with middle-eastern extremists for lump sums of cash. He was good at covering his tracks, and even better at putting on a show. The reason we were all sent to Zimmer's mansion in the first place was to devalue, disarm, and _detoxify_ him in the arms trade. Everything in that place needed to be either destroyed or repossessed. Unfortunately, Ellis had spoiled that, and now—thanks to _their _unwillinghelp—he had fled with top_-_of-the-line missiles. Ethan had no desire to remember the day 'Wistrom' had escaped his hands with nuclear launch codes. But the similarities begged him to compare.

"At 0400 hours, Ellis and his crew of lackeys used us and created a diversion so that they could get their hands on the Davy Crockett Juniors that Zimmer had showcasedinside the underground vault in his home. We have nothing right now that points to where Ellis' next stop is... thanks to a more-than-likely predetermined route he'd set up that's hard to trace."

"So... we get the go-ahead from base and start a search for the Crocketts?" Benji asks.

"No. That would take too much time. We find Zimmer. We get what we need out of him, and then we go after the last possible location of Ellis' fancy new armament." Ethan's quiet, looks from Jane to the motionless body crumpled under sheets and IV drips. "Zimmer has a track on those warheads. _I _want that tracker in our hands within the next few hours, before Ellis has time to make his next move."

Find Zimmer, find the tracking device. Find the tracking device, find the warheads. Find the warheads, find Ellis.

"I've already patched a line to director Brassel," Benji says. "He's got a secure line for you to call into. Says something about not doing anything out of your jurisdiction."

"He says that every time he talks to or about me. Let me see the number."

* * *

Ethan leaves the room for _'a breath of fresh air'_, but they both know that he's as paranoid as a man can get (if only they knew his past grievances) and it's simply his way of excusing himself for a (top) secret connection with IMF headquarters. That leaves Benji, Jane, and Brandt. Benji is used to awkward lengths of silence, but he comes to the conclusion that even with the situation as it is now, there's nothing—absolutely nothing—awkward about it. Disheartening and achy, yes, but natural, as though this team was created specifically to brave it together.

Three years of working together, _three. _This silence wasn't the sign of a disjointed team as it had been back when they were all ghosts, disavowed. Now, it was a sign of unity... or _something _like that. The way Jane smooths the blanket on Brandt's torso is like... like walking into a home and seeing what you expect most. This small space of time, feeling as small as a pinprick, has impacted him too much. In a way, they're all marred as agents. They all know it, and they're all fine with it.

Jane pulls her hair back and rises to her feet, and for some reason Benji immediately rises to his own as well like he'd been tethered to her waist. She doesn't seem to mind or take notice, and he slips over to stand beside her. Benji imagines it wouldn't be much longer until they would pack into their van and speed off. They'd be leaving their analyst in the hands of the IMF-appointed doctors pacing in from time to time, of course.

He drums his fingers against the top of the chair, bites his lip, and then immediately realizes how much he hates this.

"They said he might not wake up." He swallows thickly. "He's already died, what... three times today? That's got to be a record for him."

"He'll be surprised to hear it when he wakes up."

"Maybe even want a medal, if he doesn't have a heart-attack hearing about it." And then Benji bows his head, scratching across his short-haired scalp and sighing. "It's a good thing we're all made of tough stuff... O-or you three are, anyway. I dunno'... I couldn't even help him when he needed me to back there-"

Jane interrupts. "_Benji_. Things happened... We all did our best."

"... Yeah..."

"Now all we can do is hope we can set it all right. And believe that he'll pull through, like _we _will on this mission."

"... Yeah. He—he never much liked compromising any missions, right?" He's talking about Brandt, regretting the past tense that slips from his mouth. A cough. "So he can't compromise his own... life... mission... _thing_."

He dips his face again. She speaks softly in return, "... In order for us to succeed, you can't dive into guilt-mode. We need you with a clear head. Ethan and myself... and Brandt."

Benji's shoulders sag, and he looks tired all over again. Neither of them want another Hanaway. He still remembers how Jane's fingers trembled when she looped them around Hanaway's neck and held him close. As far as he's concerned, Brandt better not have any funny ideas about never waking up. He wants to be confident about something for once in his life. God, does he want to be, so let it at least be that everything'll turn out alright. He leans over the rail of the bed, red tie swaying on the still air like a weak-willed pendulum. There's a fire behind his eyes ill-befitting of a 'bona fide' field agent, but he was never really quite bona fide to begin with. He'd prefer to keep it that way, he thinks.

"We're gonna get that sonovabitch, Will, just you wait."

And he says it in a way that's hardly intimidating because his throat is tight and he's all wobbly—it's spoken in a way that Brandt would probably just furrow his brow at; _'you're about as bad-ass as a poodle', _he'd say—but he's dead fucking serious, mate. Standing in the familial, disheartening silence, he reaches down and gives Will's limp hand one firm squeeze. He'll live, Benji forces himself to think, because he's a sturdy person. They need him, he's too smart to die, all sorts of hogwash that he makes his heart believe in. He'll give Brandt a medal when he wakes up, for dying three times and living for the rest of it.

Agents assigned by Brassel to safeguard Brandt take their seats beside the bed. The shortened team is allowed precisely sixty seconds to load up and leave once Ethan re-enters the room. They're gone in 40. Benji watches Ethan offer the window of Will's room one lingering glance before the van speeds through the parking lot. They disappear down the block.


End file.
